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That spirituality can mean something to which New Atheist Richard Dawkins is sympathetic does not mean there is common ground between religious believers and disbelievers. It means that the concept of spirituality has become so vague that nobody can find anything in it to disagree with. Redefining spirituality did not have to have this consequence, but we are a consumer society ("The game-changer: spirituality," On Religion, The Forum, Monday).

Commentary writer Chris Mooney wants to call spirituality "the quest to discover that which is held sacred." From the fact that a great many things other than the supernatural have been held sacred, he concludes that we can all find our own sacred things. How? Is this a matter of choosing in the supermarket of beliefs or just deciding?

Well, maybe what is held sacred emerges from the spiritual experiences that we all also can have. Mooney mentions feelings of awe and wonder at cosmic beauty. Dawkins has apparently had such experiences, but he is a scientific materialist as well as an atheist. I doubt that he would hold anything sacred, so of what would his spirituality consist?

Just as the question of God is beyond the scope of science, so reconciling religious believer with disbeliever is beyond the scope of spirituality. Isn't this all right? Tolerating different beliefs, even contrasting beliefs, is one of democracy's strengths. And maybe we shouldn't be quite so eager to separate spirituality from religious faith.

Coyd Walker; Scottsbluff, Neb.

Bias against Catholicism

Chris Mooney's Forum piece is a sleight-of-hand attack on Catholic moral teaching regarding contraception. It would be interesting to know Mooney's criteria as to why the church should change its position? Perhaps simply because the writer feels it should? Two thousand years of faith and reason come to a different conclusion. I think the church's arguments far outweigh Moody's sentimentality.

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